Black Lightning is heading back to TV under DC Studios, five years after The CW canceled his Arrowverse series. Cress Williams played Jefferson Pierce, a high school principal who secretly protected the city of Freeland with his electric powers. The drama ran for four seasons between 2018 and 2021 and made history as the first DC superhero series with a Black lead.
The comeback happens in DC Super Powers, an upcoming animated series from DC Studios and Warner Bros. Animation. New details unveiled at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival confirmed Black Lightning as one of the young students at the Alliance School for Heroes, an academy where kids train to earn their superhero licenses. It marks the hero’s first project under the DC Studios banner, and it reimagines him for a far younger audience than the CW drama.
DC Studios co-CEO Peter Safran hosted the animation panel that revealed the new details, joined on stage by Warner Bros. Animation president Sam Register. The student roster pairs Black Lightning with The Flash, Plastic Man, Terra, Aquagirl, and Green Lantern, with the ring belonging to Guy Gardner. Superman, Wonder Woman, Batman, Black Canary, and Mister Terrific all appear as adults who seemingly teach at the academy, and the panel described the show as a "superpowered breakfast club."
This take on Black Lightning could hardly differ more from the Arrowverse original. Williams portrayed a grown father of two who ran Garfield High School by day and fought crime at night, while the DC Super Powers hero is a kid still figuring out what his powers can do. In essence, the old Black Lightning ran a school, and the new one attends one. DC Studios first announced the preschool series in February 2025 alongside My Adventures with Green Lantern and Starfire.
The CW announced its decision to end Black Lightning in November 2020, and the finale aired on May 24, 2021, capping a 58-episode run. A planned Painkiller spinoff starring Jordan Calloway never went to series, which shut the door on that corner of the franchise. Black Lightning is far from the only Arrowverse veteran getting a fresh start, though. Other characters who appeared alongside him on that side of DC have also been revived under DC Studios.
Jefferson’s biggest Arrowverse moment came in Crisis on Infinite Earths, the five-part crossover that aired from December 2019 to January 2020. The event saw the Anti-Monitor, a cosmic villain, wipe out entire universes with waves of anti-matter, and Jefferson joined the fight seconds before one of those waves consumed his Earth. He used his powers to help contain the villain’s anti-matter cannon, and the battle put him shoulder to shoulder with the biggest heroes in DC television.
Black Lightning’s Arrowverse Allies Also Getting New Versions
Superman
Crisis famously stacked three Supermen into one story. Tyler Hoechlin’s Man of Steel took center stage, Brandon Routh returned to the role for a Kingdom Come-inspired take, and Tom Welling made a brief comeback as the Clark Kent of Smallville. Hoechlin held onto the cape for eight years in total, from his 2016 debut on Supergirl through the end of Superman & Lois.
David Corenswet now wears the red trunks for the DCU. His debut in 2025’s Superman grossed more than $600 million worldwide and finished as the highest-grossing superhero film of that year. Gunn wrote and directed that film and returns for the sequel, Man of Tomorrow, which opens in theaters on July 9, 2027, and forces Superman into an uneasy alliance with Nicholas Hoult’s Lex Luthor against a far bigger threat.
Supergirl
Melissa Benoist starred as Kara Danvers for six seasons between 2015 and 2021, moving from CBS to The CW along the way. Crisis leaned on her heavily, casting Kara as the Paragon of Hope, one of the seven survivors destined to restore the multiverse.
Milly Alcock has since claimed the mantle in the DCU. She debuted with a memorable drunken cameo in Superman, then headlined this summer’s Supergirl, which director Craig Gillespie adapted from the Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow comic. Alcock will appear next in Man of Tomorrow, and Safran teased that she is "a major part of what we’re doing" at DC Studios.
Lois Lane
Elizabeth Tulloch debuted as Lois Lane in the Arrowverse’s 2018 Elseworlds crossover and returned for Crisis on Infinite Earths a year later. She and Hoechlin then led Superman & Lois for four seasons, and its finale on December 2, 2024, brought the curtain down on the era of DC shows on The CW.
Rachel Brosnahan inherited the role for the DCU. Her tense newsroom interview with Clark became one of the most discussed scenes in Superman, and she returns alongside Corenswet in the sequel next summer.
Flash
Grant Gustin fronted The Flash for nine seasons between 2014 and 2023, the longest run of any series in the franchise. His show also hosted the crossover chapter that introduced Jefferson to the wider universe, with Barry Allen among the first heroes to welcome him into the fight.
DC Super Powers passes the mantle to Jesse Chambers, the speedster comic readers know as Jesse Quick, who studies at the academy as one of Black Lightning’s classmates. The pair will share a homeroom this time instead of a battlefield. The mantle swap even mirrors Gustin’s series, which introduced its own take on Jesse Quick through Violett Beane’s Earth-2 speedster.
Bonus: Brainiac 5
Jesse Rath played Brainiac 5 across four seasons of Supergirl, and the twelfth-level intellect featured in the crossover as well, helping evacuate roughly three billion people from Earth-38 before the planet fell.
The DCU is also introducing its version of Brainiac, who is a lot different from the Arrowverse one. Lars Eidinger plays the Collector of Worlds in Man of Tomorrow, and this version arrives as the main villain, the very threat pushing Superman and Luthor into their reluctant partnership. The comics tie the two characters together by blood, since Brainiac 5 descends from the original conqueror and chose the heroic path his ancestor rejected. That makes Brainiac the only name on this list returning as an enemy rather than a friend.
Geraldo Amartey is a writer at The Direct. He joined the team in 2025, bringing with him four years of experience covering entertainment news, pop culture, and fan-favorite franchises for sites like YEN, Briefly and Tuko.
